


Differences and Similarities

by LibKat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, No Tormund hating here, With a soupçon of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 13:36:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11105637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibKat/pseuds/LibKat
Summary: Even their similarities are different.





	Differences and Similarities

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first new fic I've posted in a long time and the first I've completed in this fandom. The style is kind of weird, but I couldn't figure out a better way to get at what I wanted.

Disclaimer: A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones and these characters belong to a whole bunch of people who are not me. I will return them undamaged when I am finished playing with them.

***

Even their similarities are different. Go figure.

-They both had a strong reaction to each other when they met.

Jaime Lannister did _not_ immediately dislike Brienne Tarth, though you might be forgiven for thinking he did. He first set eyes on her as he walked out of the locker room on his third visit to Syrio’s Boxing Academy. The unreliable filter between his brain and his mouth couldn’t stop Jaime from tossing an incredulous “Good gods, is that a woman?” at Brienne as she worked the heavy bag. She slowly turned her head and blinked at him once as if he wasn't worthy of more. Cocky grin spreading across his face, he challenged the giant, homely blonde to a few rounds in the ring. Jaime grew downright intrigued by her when, uttering barely a sound, she kicked his ass like it hadn’t been kicked since primary school. Brienne continued to be practically monosyllabic and to look at him like he was shit on her shoe every time they crossed paths. Which happened often after Jaime bribed the towel boy for her work out schedule. Needling her, poking to see if he could crack that stone façade, delighted him for some reason. It became his new favorite distraction from the restlessness that always plagued him between projects. He took every opportunity to try and rile her up, catcalling when he wasn’t her sparring partner, trash talking when he had her in the ring. Pretty quickly he wouldn’t tolerate anybody else disrespecting her and used his cutting tongue and killer right cross on those who tried. Once they grew into a friendship, Brienne asked him about it. Jaime explained that he’d always been an asshole, it was part of being a Lannister, but he didn't mean most of the shit he talked. Those other guys did and he wouldn't stand for that. Jaime was amazed that Brienne hadn’t gotten that about him right away.

But Brienne really did loathe Jaime. Handsome golden boy (though getting a bit long in the tooth to qualify as a “boy”), with his perfect hair, his perfect teeth, his perfectly obnoxious upper class KL accent calling insults from across the gym to much-less-than-perfect her. Brienne had been dealing with bullies her whole life. She’d learned long ago if she kept a calm demeanor, didn’t engage when she could avoid it and pounded them into the ground when she couldn’t, usually they backed down or at least turned down the volume on the mockery. Jaime didn’t. He was loud, bold, in her face, ever more florid until his insults almost sounded like compliments. Eventually he broke through her protective wall and she just had to laugh and insult him right back. When she did, she was rewarded with a heart-stoppingly beautiful smile that seemed to say “Well, finally.”

-They both loved classic rock, particularly the ‘60s.

Brienne had carefully crafted playlists featuring infinite combinations of the Beatles, Creedence, Joplin and a plethora of other artists to suit her every mood and activity. It was her desire to always have music to retreat into when she felt overwhelmed by the side-eyes and comments her appearance evoked that led Brienne to develop the mPod, the product that put EvenStar on the map. Jaime called it the embarrassment that changed the world but, in his heart, it made him a little sad.

But Jaime had the same 5 Stones CDs on endless repeat in his old fashioned stereo. For all that he was COO of a tech juggernaut and had learned to speak geek like his native language, he was still a little bit of a phobe at heart. Brienne swore that she would never, ever resort to making him a mix _tape_ , no matter how much he begged.

-They both hated walking into a conference room and seeing assumptions based on their looks.

Jaime used the assumption that someone so good looking must be stupid or callow or vain. That he couldn’t possibly be the canny entrepreneur who took his sparring partner’s basement start-up and turned it into the fastest growing company in Westeros. Jaime happily ran with whatever role he’d been assigned – handsome douchebag, dumb rich boy, preening tool – and played it to the hilt. He was like a cat toying with an especially clueless mouse. Once he had his prey exactly where he wanted them, Jaime moved in for the kill. And those who underestimated him crawl away, metaphorically bleeding from wounds they never saw coming, unsure how they came out the loser dealing with the pretty boy of EvenStar Tech. Brienne could always tell when it happened because Jaime was even more insufferably smug for days. 

But Brienne had no patience with assumptions that the brilliant Ms. Tarth couldn't possibly be someone who looks like she should be a bouncer at ComicCon (one of Jaime’s early insults and still one of her favorites.) Yes, she was a groundbreaking engineer and yes, she was six foot three, and yes, she looked like she could bench press a small car and yes, people should do some research before walking into her conference room. There were two worlds where Brienne felt completely confident: martial arts and technology. Since she couldn’t use the first at a business meeting, the second was her sword and shield. When Brienne felt underestimated in a business meeting, she didn't play around. She flat out steamrolled with her intellect and acumen. She took a pitch, picked it apart, exposed every flaw and let it lie bleeding out on the ground. And then she waited. If she felt she was getting a modicum of basic courtesy and respect (or at least the goggling was at her brains rather than her size), she’d share her insights as well as her criticism, opening up a realm of possibilities that weren’t dreamed of before meeting with her. If not, she’d say a cordial goodbye and go off to develop a better product on her own. Jaime had all the assistants alerted to text him when this happened and he’d rush into the meeting. Not to try to save Brienne from insult but to sit back and grin as he watched her kick ass and take names. Sometimes he brought popcorn.

-They both always chose ice cream over any other sweet. 

Brienne used her grandmother’s antique crystal dessert dishes to eat her premium vanilla. The delicate portions could stretch a pint for days. It reminded her of trying to start her company on a frayed shoestring with money so tight that a single scoop cone from Grenn and Eddy’s was a carefully budgeted splurge. Any time Jaime caught her savoring a “tiny dish of bland”, he mocked her relentlessly.

But Jaime ate vast amounts of generic supermarket chocolate straight from the carton with a serving spoon. Growing up Lannister gave him his fill of fancy food on fancy dishes. It wasn’t until he started school that he realized ice cream wasn’t something made to order by the household chef that took so long you weren’t hungry for it any more by the time it was ready. Even at forty-mumble name days, he still stocked the kitchen with giant tubs of the stuff along with cans of Red Viper Chili and Dragon Dogs and Twinkies. Brienne kind of hated him for being able to eat that crap and not weigh 800 pounds.

-They both lost their mother at an early age.

Jaime had concrete memories of his mom. He remembered being tucked into bed at night with a soft kiss on his forehead. He remembered being told to eat his vegetables so the Warrior would make him big and strong and skillful like his daddy. He remembered leaning his cheek against his mother’s belly and feeling his baby brother-to-be kicking from inside her. And Jaime remembered how his father was with his mother. He remembered lying on the floor of their enormous bedroom playing with his cars while his parents got ready for a party, his twin sister pestering their mother to play with her jewelry, high heels and perfume, then his father patting Jaime’s cheeks with a bit of aftershave because “the ladies want a fellow to smell nice too.” He remembered helping his father hide little presents around the house before Tywin left on long business trips, always with the admonishment to “Let Mama find these on her own, Jaime. No helping her now.” He remembered coming upon them once in the gazebo, his mother chanting “Tywin” and “My love” in a breathy little voice as his father’s lips moved along her neck. Jaime remembered running to the front door, expecting his mother and new brother to come home from the hospital, only to be pushed aside without a word by a stone-faced stranger who locked himself in Daddy’s study for three days and nights, leaving Aunt Genna to fetch baby Tyrion home. He remembered the man who came out of that study was never the same, never really his father again. Jaime remembered promising himself that he would never, ever love someone so completely that losing her would change him to the very essence of his being, for that was what losing Joanna Lannister did to Tywin. One night he drunkenly confessed this to Brienne and thought he remembered her crying with him.

But Brienne had no memories of her mother, just a few faded snapshots from before the accident that took Alysanne Tarth’s life. And she had her father’s stories. In her father’s stories, her mother was the sweetest, prettiest, kindest girl in the Stormlands and Selwyn was the luckiest man in the world because she chose him. Brienne learned early not to ask for stories about her mother too often. Her daddy shared them eagerly, but he was sad for days afterward. Then he would leave her with the mean neighbor lady, Miss Roelle in the evening and wouldn’t come home until after dawn. He always smelled funny those mornings, like smoke and burned corn and dead flowers. A woman might appear in their lives after one of these nights, for a few days or even a few months. Some were kind to Brienne and some were not. No matter how the women treated her, she was never sorry when they disappeared. Her father wasn't truly happy until they had gone away and it was just he and Brienne again. Until the next time Brienne couldn’t resist asking about her mother. Brienne remembered thinking that the only thing she really wanted was a love as deep and true as her mother and father shared. Even when Jaime told her about his mom and dad, Brienne couldn’t find the courage to tell him about that.

-They both hated high school. 

Jaime, on the surface, had the clichéd best-years-of-our-lives high school experience. He was a sports standout: the quarterback, the clean-up batter _and_ the point guard. He was voted the Hottest Guy In School in a secret/not-secret contest 3 years running. He had a large group of friends to hang out with. Girls dropped their panties if he so much as glanced in their direction. No one knew undiagnosed dyslexia made studying a nightmare, almost impossible without copious help from his brainiac little brother. Jaime sometimes had to hide during scheduled exams, hyperventilating from anxiety, and then he had to beg for makeups. Only pressure from the coaches kept his grades high enough to stay on his teams and have any hope of playing college ball. His father never even tried to hide his contempt when Jaime brought home another barely passing report card. The lectures usually ended with some sneered comment about it being good that Jaime’s athleticism bringing honor to the family name because his brains never would. Aside from a few teammates, the crowd around Jaime was a clique of vapid sycophants that jockeyed for position with his queen bee twin, making his once sweet sister grow ever more mean and manipulative. Cersei ruled their school and his social life with an iron fist in a barbed wire glove. Jaime learned junior year that the only girls actually dropping their panties for him were being chosen by his sister. No girl could date him without her express permission. Even drunken hook ups at parties required approval. Any girl seen with Jaime who hadn’t received Cersei’s blessing was mercilessly slut shamed until she came begging for forgiveness or left the school. Jaime was so disgusted by it that he stopped trying to date altogether. At least Cersei couldn’t control his relationship with his right hand. Jaime spent his high school years looking like the king of the world but feeling like a stupid, horny, side of beef jock whose father despised him and whose sister kept his dick in a box. Running unexpectedly into someone from his Kingsguard Prep days could still cause Jaime’s heart to pound and required a soothing shoulder rub from Brienne to help him calm the fuck down.

But Brienne hit just about every cliché for high school years from the hells. She was a big, homely, shy girl in a small’ish town where she had been the butt of jokes for years. As she progressed from primary to middle school and middle school to high school, so did the number of boys to torment her and girls to mock or pity her. Brienne, however, had advantages that Jaime did not. She never doubted her father’s love, giving her a core of self-worth to sustain her. She was school smart, book smart in both the arts and the sciences. She could disappear into the computer lab and bury herself in her fascination with tech. Caring teachers encouraged her, letting her know that there was a whole big world out there beyond her little island community just waiting for someone with her gifts. The summer before her junior year, her dad’s old navy buddy moved to town and opened a dojo. Mr. Goodwin couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help him with the scut work, so Brienne traded chores for lessons and found a place outside her tiny bungalow home where she felt like she truly belonged. Through karate she gained control of her body, feeling lithe and powerful rather than heavy and ungainly. Through boxing she gained confidence. Through Tai Chi she developed an inner calm that went beyond the stoic facade she’d built to survive the bullies. At the end of each day, Brienne closed her eyes and imagined the time when she would leave Brave Companions High behind. With her newfound confidence, she began to stick up herself and for the other picked upon students in the school. She gained a social group. Yes, they were all misfits and dweebs and awkward brainiacs together, but they were hers and she was their’s and having some friends made everything more tolerable. Still there were nights when she woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares about jeering boys following her home from the playground and she needed to hear Jaime’s voice to soothe her back to sleep.

-They both are athletic and have been all their lives. 

Brienne’s chosen sports were the solitary ones - running, biking, martial arts - activities where you depended on yourself alone. Growing up there had been no for the equipment and private coaches and special summer camps that team sports seemed to require in order to excel. And Brienne always felt there was mockery lurking in her teammates on the schoolyard, just waiting to burst free if she needed to rely on them. She was never able to relax and enjoy playing the game. Now she’d sometimes let Jaime drag her along in his wake when he wanted to play, and she gave it her very best. How could she do less when she was on Jaime’s team and Jaime always had her back.

But Jaime loved team sports and had since his first T ball game when he was four. Yes, he boxed and he ran, but give him four or eight or ten other players around him, a ball to play with and he felt like he was on top of the world. He gave his all to every game in every sport, be it his champion amateur baseball team or pick up basketball in a city park. With his abilities and confidence, he was a natural leader and would inspire, cajole or insult every other player to give more, play better than they ever imagined they could. The only person who ever fought his natural dominance in sports was a tall tow-headed plank who thought she was a better boxer than he. Jaime contended that he was still teaching her a lesson she’d never forget. 

-They both hate the social side of running a business.

Jaime, with his years of Lannister training, could hide his disdain and light up a room. His good looks and ready wit drew people to him like moths to a flame. He and Brienne agreed when they began their business partnership that the bulk of their social obligations would fall on Jaime. He would be the enthusiastic public face of the company and Brienne would be the reclusive nerd inventor lurking in the background and that story would play in the press like hot cakes. As time went on Jaime bitched about it, long and hard, every time he had to go out and schmooze the stockholders or do the razzle-dazzle product launches at tech conventions. Brienne just laughed and told him to suck it up or learn to write code.

But Brienne never wanted to be the center of any gathering not related to engineering. The times when she couldn’t avoid business socializing, she looked for the darkest, most deserted part of the party and planted herself there as soon as she could, hoping no one would notice the tall blonde trying to be inconspicuous. She usually managed about five minutes of peace before Jaime looked dramatically around him and started exclaiming “Where’s that wench got to?” He would drag her back out of her corner, his arm pinning her to his side until something distracted him and she managed to escape again, starting the whole embarrassing process over. And by making a game of it, Jaime made socializing a little more endurable for Brienne.

-They both have known financial hard times.

Jaime only went relatively broke, like a wealthy person does. When he walked away from his cushy, undemanding VP of Marketing position at Casterly Corp., he owned a posh penthouse condominium, a luxury SUV, a classic Bravosi Titan motorcycle and a racing catamaran. He had investments, full access to his trust fund and Casterly stock options that his father couldn’t touch. Jaime Lannister’s financial reversal was really more like going from fabulously wealthy to merely very, very well off. He “tightened his belt”, giving up the country club membership and the skybox at DragonPit Stadium. He sold some shares to his little brother. Then he started looking to invest his money and his energy in a promising new business. A wonderful opportunity dropped in his lap almost at once. His decorator, Chataya and her partner Olyvar wanted to open a club. With their combined social connections it was sure to be the hot place to go in KL for years to come. Jaime took most of his available capital and threw himself enthusiastically into property rental, fixture purchasing and marketing designs. He ignored any misgivings he might have had about his partners, until an overheard telephone conversation set him digging into the books. What he found led to yet more digging until he traced Olyvar back to the Baelish crime syndicate, known for drugs and human trafficking. His shiny new club was meant to be their new front for providing girls and dope and laundering the profits. When confronted Chataya admitted everything, including that she had been pointed in Jaime’s direction by Petyr Baelish himself in hopes of gaining leverage on Tywin Lannister. Jaime gathered up Chataya and all the information he'd discovered and paid a visit to the Westeros Bureau of Investigation. They had been after Baelish for years. Special Agent Selmy happily took everything Jaime had discovered, offered Chataya witness protection and promised to keep the Lannister name out of it if possible. After that meeting, wandering around downtown KL in a quandary over his future, Jaime happened to buy a meat pie from a decrepit food truck. He wolfed down the pie in a few bites, licking every finger clean and barely stopping himself from sucking some drippings off his tie, then he went back and bought another. Jaime leaned against the counter as the chubby young cook gave a five minute lecture on the importance of the gravy. He sold his boat and motorcycle to finance refitting the space intended for the club and that was the start of the Hot Pie Bakery Café empire. He found his next project passing a crafts fair in a park, where sweet, widowed Walda Bolton was trying to sell her cute little beanbag toys. A few Winterfests later those fantastical little direwolves, dragons and kraken were the got-to-have-them present for practically every kid in Westeros and the source of every parent’s retail nightmares. Jaime hired an admin assistant whose girlfriend turned out to be a brilliant, under appreciated esthetician and the Pia’s Natural Skin Care Spa chain was born. With each new business Jaime followed his instincts. When they became a success, he sold his shares back to his partners and walked away with a bit more money in his pocket and went in search of the next challenge. He told himself he was like a modern day traveling salesman, finding the product that could he could sell the hells out of, but never getting his foot caught in the door. Not until Brienne and the future she envisioned and her astonishingly blue eyes called to him in a way he hadn’t known he needed.

But Brienne had been broke like a poor person. She got her degrees on academic scholarships and part time jobs that never quite paid for all the things a “full” scholarship didn’t cover. After graduation, she was recruited heavily by all the top tech firms, including a division of the Great Stranger, Casterly Corp. But all the standard employment contracts signed away her rights to anything she developed, whether it was on the job or in her personal time. She had too many ideas, too many brainchildren waiting to be born. How could she give them over to hands that might be less caring, less committed to excellence than her own were? So she rejected all the “high five with stock options which means essentially six figures” job offers and she kept scrambling. Managing an apartment building gave her a roof over her head and a basement storeroom to tinker in. Free lance coding put food on the table, even if it was only peanut butter or ramen, and paid for components for her projects. She designed and sold a popular game based on the legend of Ser Goldenhand and the Blue Knight to a software company for enough money to finish the design for the mPod and have a bit left over to join a gym. Where she met an obnoxious asshole with a sterling reputation for business smarts and ethics despite his last name. When she finally stopped hitting him and started talking to him, he got every bit of her vision for what her company could become and wanted to be part of making it happen.

-They both found college to be better than high school, but in unexpected ways.

Brienne ran into more obstacles in college than she anticipated. It seemed there was still a lot of the world that wasn’t waiting for her and her gifts, despite what her high school teachers had claimed. There were hidebound dinosaurs in the Engineering Department of Stormlands University who didn’t think women belonged in the STEM programs. Not many, but enough to make life harder than it had to be. She was a freshman taking upper division courses so making friends was hard. Her second semester, in Dr. Tarly’s Advanced Systems Design class, she started to garner a surprising amount of attention. Guys wanted to sit with her, copy her notes, be study buddies, get coffee after class. She didn’t know they were Tarly’s wolf pack, the guys with a rep for driving women away from the program. At the end of term, Brienne was heavily pressured to attend a post-finals party being thrown at Hyle Hunt’s off campus apartment. She did go, but in the company of a six foot five, ginger bearded art student from Beyondthewall. She already liked Tormund, but she knew she really liked him when he was man enough to stand back and let her be the one to break Connington’s nose when Ron groped her and then called her a cunt. She knew she really, really liked him when Tormund got royally pissed at her after she joked that he should collect the winnings for the cherry popping bet since they’d taken care of her virginity on their Spring Break camping trip. That night she lost the “friends” she thought she was making in the engineering program, but Tormund was already introducing her to people she never would have met without him. He hung out with artists, actors and musicians who first accepted her for Tormund’s sake and then came to like her for herself. With them she learned she could sing at the top of her lungs, dance like nobody was judging and that an artist’s eye saw many different things in her strong body and homely face. All the aesthetic principles that were dismissed by Tarly and his sort, Brienne was able to explore with them, making her not just a wizard, but an artist with her tech designs. The lasting friendships she made at college were mostly with these wild, crazy, incredibly accepting people. Brienne and Tormund were together until he graduated and went back to the land of always winter to build himself a homestead and work on his beautiful weirwood sculptures. When Tormund left, Brienne’s heart wasn’t broken, just a bit dented. They had known all along that they wanted very different things from life, so they had enjoyed their time together without getting in too deep. Brienne learned how much passion she had inside herself with Tormund and that there were men who would not just appreciate but luxuriate in that passion. Brienne was surprised to discover, the first time she went to Jaime’s apartment, that he owned two of Tormund’s sculptures of her, one of her hands grasping a sword hilt and the other a somewhat abstract nude. The next time she visited the hands were still on display in the living room, but the nude had migrated to the privacy of Jaime’s study. Because, Jaime claimed, it was weird to have guests ogling his partner’s nekkid butt.

But Jaime started out with college being exactly as he’d hoped it would be. He finally had the things he wanted in high school (sports, bros, chicks) and lost the things that made him miserable (Dad’s disapproval, Cersei’s manipulations.) The graduating quarterback, Arthur Dayne, was generous with his time and friendship, making Jaime feel immediately accepted by the team. He was automatically enrolled in classes tailored for jocks so his studies weren't very challenging. A team booster introduced him to a pretty girl who volunteered to study with him. She found him so hot and sexy that she started using blow jobs as a motivational tool. Jaime’s life was finally going according to plan. Then, in the spring of sophomore year, the registrar messed up his schedule and he got Professor Stark for Classical Lit. Professor Stark did not do jock classes. She required real research papers and essay exams and class participation. She was infamous for her Lady Stoneheart’s Classroom Ambush. When she suspected that a student hadn’t done the homework, she would have them read aloud and then lead the class in a discussion. His hoovering study buddy did not have the skills to help him with Professor Stark and she dumped him after the first week of class. Ami had called herself his girlfriend, but Jaime realized that all along he had been her job, a tutor provided by the booster club, the fucking and sucking all part of the service. Without anyone to help him study, Jaime's first quiz came back so marked up with red that he could barely see what he’d written. Stark invariably called on him in class and sneered at his ill prepared answers. Then Jaime did the unthinkable and dozed off during a lecture. Next thing he knew he was being invited to read the mopey fucking poetry of King Jon Targaryen in front of the whole class. He did the only thing he could think of and was so obnoxiously sarcastic that the professor dismissed the class early. Jaime was prepared for an epic reaming followed by a visit to the dean for formal disciplinary measures. He was shocked when Professor Stark just stared at him for a long while. Then she sighed deeply and handed him a couple pamphlets about services at the learning lab. The specialist in dyslexia was expecting to hear from him before the end of the week. Professor Stark explained awkwardly that her brother had a reading disorder so she recognized the signs. But her brother had worked harder than Jaime could possibly imagine and was now a judge in the Riverlands Courts. After that first appointment at the learning lab, Jaime did work harder than he believed possible, because Stark never again cut him an inch of slack that wasn’t required by the Westerosi With Disablities Act. That cold, cutting voice asking “Do you even have work hard in you, Mr. Lannister?” remained fresh in his mind. And it should have because he still saw Professor Stark at least every few months. Somehow, probably because the Seven have a sick sense of humor, his little brother, Tyrion the Wild Lion of Lannister, was finally tamed by Sansa Stark, the professor’s sweetly pretty daughter. At the engagement party Sansa made it clear to Jaime that there would be many Stark-Lannister events in the years to come where his attendance would be mandatory. Since there was a direwolf’s will behind that angel face, Jaime’d been to more birthday parties, weddings, graduations, etc. in the last decade than any man estranged from most of his birth family should have to attend. The first time Jaime dragged Brienne to a family barbecue he walked away for two seconds and there was Brienne with _Catelyn_ , bonding over smoked fish recipes and Jaime’s shortcomings. Jaime was sure there’d been times in his life when he was more unnerved, but nothing came immediately to mind.

-They both didn’t believe love was in the cards for them.

Jaime didn’t think he wanted it. Oh, he liked women. He liked pretty much everything about them. But as Jaime matured and his dick stopped jumping to attention every time a pair of legs went by, he wondered if women actually liked him. His past had left him with more insecurities than his looks and money led a woman to expect. He always seemed to find some way to fuck things up. He was too clingy or too aloof, too sarcastic or too cloying, just always _too_ something. He frequently felt that he was being treated like a commodity by women: the sports hero, the gorgeous entrepreneur, the Lannister heir, his emotional baggage barely tolerated in exchange for the advantages association with him could bring. He decided he just wasn’t good at relationships, but one nighters left him feeling empty and sad. Just like in high school, his right hand became more appealing than a woman who was with him for the wrong reasons. When Brienne came along Jaime was out of practice with romance. He considered himself her boyfriend long before she even realized they were dating. Okay, the hardly any touching, no kissing and NO sex might have caused confusion, but Jaime still felt like he’d given more of himself to Brienne than to any woman who’d ever shared his bed. When their IPO went through the roof an impulsive celebratory kiss went way beyond a friendly peck on the lips and tore the blinders from Brienne’s eyes. She immediately started to retreat, even hinting that it was time for Jaime to take his profits and move on, the way he had with all his other startups. Matters came to a head in a screaming argument that ended with Brienne riding him on his living room floor like some Dothraki warrior goddess. Jaime told Brienne he loved her the first time he was inside her. In the kitchen the next morning, the bacon burning while Jaime went down on her, he proposed. (He was already on his knees.) It took him weeks of passion and pushing and _patience_ for Brienne to believe he meant what he’d said … then and every day after.

But Brienne, in her heart of hearts, wanted real, lasting love someday. She just didn't think she had it in her. She was too driven, too analytical. If she were capable, wouldn’t she have had that with Tormund? He was smart, kind, funny, sexy and her first. But she had never been able to let go of that last little bit of self-control. Her engineer’s brain couldn’t overlook the flaw in the design of their relationship; that their ambitions would ultimately put them on diverging paths. And didn’t every relationship have design flaws? In grad school and once Brienne started building her company, she didn’t have the time or attention for a lover. She had a few brief, comfortable relationships with undemanding guys who were happy to stick to friends with benefits. She _never_ considered pursuing anything with Jaime, outside the occasional (or frequent) hot and dirty dream. Jaime was too handsome, too glib and the very opposite of undemanding. Though she had painstakingly built up her self-image over the years, a man who looked like that, a man who could have any woman he wanted and probably had, couldn’t possibly be interested in someone like her, even if sometimes there was a weird light in his eyes when he looked at her. As her buddy and business partner, Jaime was always pushing her buttons and her boundaries. Gods, as a lover he’d be exhausting, and not just in the fun, sexytimes way. Brienne developed a mantra that she chanted to herself every time her pulse pounded and her knees got weak. “You’re not for him and he’s _not_ for you.” After that first, surprising, hot-as-hells kiss melted her bones and short circuited her brain, Brienne did everything she could think of to push him away, even trying to get out of their partnership. But Jaime would not be pushed. What she would give him he would take and she found herself having more to give him without losing any of herself. Faster than she dreamed possible she was giving him everything she had and getting back the same and design flaws became design features. They got married eleven months after their first time, but years after they became intimate. It was simple, heartfelt ceremony on the same beach where her parents had wed. As Jaime and Brienne said their vows, their hands bound together with ribbons of crimson and gold and azure and rose, Selwyn Tarth wept unashamedly and Tywin Lannister brushed sand off his suit jacket.

-They both were terrified about having kids.

Jaime was really invested in pretending he wasn’t. The stick turned blue and Jaime went crazy. Within a week there were enough toys and stuffed animals and baby gadgets in the house to open their own store. When the first ultrasound revealed two embryos he buried his face in Brienne’s hair and wept. Then he had the printouts framed for his desk and the recording of the heartbeats set as his ringtone. The women at _their_ obstetrician’s office adored Jaime. He happily discussed epidural vs natural, breast vs bottle and cotton vs disposable with anybody who’d stand still for the conversation. He claimed he’d already had plenty of practical experience with the Stark kids, who all loved him. He’d always chosen playing with the kids at the get togethers over having to interact with Professor Stark (and because he loved the pinched look she got when all the kids called him _Uncle_ Jaime.) When Sansa got pregnant, she had insisted that part of his duties as godsfather and moral support for his very nervous younger brother included learning to diaper and feed and rock and soothe. And Jaime felt like he was good at it. He’d already been spit up and peed on. He’d helped coach little league, bandaged skinned knees and held small people when they cried. He had this. Many people did guess all that overconfidence was covering something. They thought it was because his mother died in childbirth. And yes that did worry him, but Brienne was strong and healthy where his mother had always been fragile. When his mother died his father became a cold and distant monster. And that kind of worried him too. Losing Brienne would be the worst thing he could imagine happening. But he believed in himself enough to hope that he wouldn’t take his grief out on his children or blame them in any way. His real, deep, at-his-core worry was that Brienne didn’t really want this, that she was only having kids to make him happy. About a year after the wedding, Robb and Ned started teasing him about having to get going or he’d end up being “an old dad”. And that thought did hit him hard. He wanted to have all those experiences with his own kids: coaching sports, camping out, running around and wrestling and all the physical stuff he never got with his own father and envied other kids over. He wanted to be able to embarrass his teenagers because he was old like all parents are, not because he was actually _old_. He knew Brienne saw his face and that it got her thinking. Birth control was abandoned a couple weeks later. Brienne told him over and over that she was happy about the twins. She took all the classes and read all the books. They put together furniture and worked on the nursery. But Jaime could tell there was something going on and he couldn't get her to tell him what. He was still worrying it about when the contractions started.

But Brienne freely admitted she was never one of those girls who dreamed of being a mother. She never played with baby dolls. She was too busy taking the toaster apart to figure out how it worked. She didn’t babysit to earn extra money. She was so big and her hands were so rough and, even if the kids weren’t nervous around her, the parents were. A child was something she’d maybe consider in some far off future when she’d achieved everything she wanted to achieve and had the time to visit a sperm bank and be a single mom, because she didn’t really believe any relationship would stick long enough for children to be a possibility. Then Jaime exploded into her life and brought along a family that overflowed with kids that Jamie adored and the feeling was mutual, while they alternately delighted and terrified her. Once she and Jamie got together that vague far off visit to a sperm bank idea changed and became very specific. Her kids would be Jaime’s kids. She would have a committed man in her life who would father them with love and laughter. She saw the fear in Jaime’s eyes at being old when their kids came along and yes, it accelerated her schedule. But these things were supposed to take a while and she thought she would have some time to sort out her feelings. She hadn’t expected to conceive almost immediately. She never dreamed of twins. There was also the not entirely pleasant surprise of her good father, Tywin, inserting himself into their lives. He came waving trust funds and legacy school placements at them while demanding extra tests and office visits with “the top” doctors to ensure than Brienne didn’t have the same physical issues that led to Joanna Lannister’s death. Even having his “top” obstetrician pronounce that Brienne had the heart of a lion and the hips of a Tyroshi peasant woman didn’t calm his meddling in her pregnancy. He’d done the same to Sansa and her advice was to just go with it. It was easier than the private investigators, attempts at court orders and the lawyer visits that resistance brought. If you thought about it, he was really being kind of sweet in an entirely overbearing Lannister way. Her own dad was less forceful but just as over the top, egging Jaime on in every excessive display he thought up and then adding suggestions of his own. Brienne hated being the center of so much attention. Maybe if it had just been she and Jaime, she could have ignored her fears. That she’d be a lousy mother. Brienne knew herself. She knew that her ability to focus was her greatest strength. What if she was focused on the wrong thing? What if she was focused on work when her kids needed her and they got hurt or into drugs because she wasn’t paying attention? What if she was focused on her kids and her company that put food on their table went down the drain? And she couldn’t share this with Jaime, because she was the only person who understood that he was freaking out over whether she was ready for kids. It wasn’t until she was holding Joanna, with her Lannister green eyes and wisps of straw blonde hair, and Jaime was holding Alysanne, blue and golden, that she opened up. As the hospital room door swung closed behind the teary-eyed new grandfathers, Brienne told Jaime, with the profound enlightenment brought on by good drugs and utter exhaustion, that she wasn’t ready. Because no one really is. Jaime didn’t ”have this” because no one ever does. They would love each other and these babies until the sun grew cold and time itself ended. And they would still screw up. They’d miss stuff and focus on the wrong things. They’d be the fun parents and the strict parents and cool and old and embarrassing. They’d be a family. And finally she told Jaime to kiss her so she could shut off her brain and get some sleep. Because they were bringing their daughters home in the morning.


End file.
